Washington (CNN) - They have worked in the same building for years, and in some cases decades, but members of a special congressional committee tasked with reaching a deficit reduction deal started to "begin to know each other" at a private meeting Thursday, one of the panel co-chairs said.

The 12-member committee created under last month's debt ceiling agreement has held two previous public hearings to sort out rules and hear from the head of the Congressional Budget Office.

soundoff(3 Responses)

Four and The Door

The president wants the committee to expand its $1.5 trillion target to also pay for his freshly unveiled $447 billion jobs plan.
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It's interesting the kind of support being offered by Obama at this time. Here they are trying to come up with a way to pay for past government overspending and he throws in a request for another $450 billion for them to tackle on top of that.

While those of us outside of Washington living in reality have made the sacrifices to get things done on smaller budgets out of necessity, he keeps coming up with new ways to spend money he doesn't have, and lots of it!

September 15, 2011 12:00 pm at 12:00 pm |

Rudy NYC

@Four and The Door
Since when has a tax cut become spending. During Monday's debate, Rep. Paul openly expressed the commonly held conservative that "tax cuts are not spending". By that logic, most of that $450B isn't spending because most of it is tax cuts and *extensions* of existing tax cuts.

September 15, 2011 12:15 pm at 12:15 pm |

Four and The Door

Rudy NYC
@Four and The Door
Since when has a tax cut become spending.
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Since when is $140 billion for infrastructure building and $49 billion for extended unemployment benefits tax cuts?
And if he tries to call it a 'jobs' bill why is he adding $49 billion to pay people not to work?